The gender of nouns is a grammatical category, manifested in the ability of nouns to be combined with specific forms of consonant words. The gender category can be expressed semantically (that is, in meaning, only in animated nouns), grammatically and syntactically. Semantically, all nouns are masculine, feminine, and middle. Words referring to animals and males refer to the masculine gender (brother, grandfather, student, goose, rooster, horse); nouns calling animals and females (sister, grandmother, student, goose, chicken, horse) - to the feminine; animals and persons regardless of gender (monster, monster, face (person), child) - to the middle gender.
The gender of nouns is grammatically expressed using the ending in the nominative case. This category of the genus is characteristic of both animate and inanimate declined nouns. In this case, in addition to the 3 main genera, a common genus is also distinguished. The differences between them are presented in the table:
Male gender | Feminine gender | Neuter gender | Common gender |
- the ending is zero, the base ends on a solid consonant or on the-th (chair, hero); - the ending is zero, the basis ends with a soft consonant, and in the genitive case the endings are a, -i (a horse is a horse, a doctor is a doctor, ivy is ivy). | - the ending -a, -i (hand, ground), except for words that name males (servant, voivode) and words with the suffix –in, showing a magnifying subjective score (domina, bridge); - the ending is zero, the base ends in a consonant, and in the genitive case the ending is -i (rye - rye, quiet - quiet, notebook - notebooks). | - ending -o, -e (grain, sea); - the words of a child, a monster, a monster, a face; - 10 divergent nouns per -me (tribe, time, name, banner, seed, stirrup, udder, crown, burden, flame); - some unshakable inanimate nouns of foreign origin (taboo, taxi, jury, stew, interview, sconce). | - the ending -a, -i, in words that describe the faces of the male and female (dormouse, bruise, gruff, bully, stutter, lounger, orphan, sneak, roar, ignoramus). |
The gender of nouns can be syntactically determined by the form of a coordinated word, which depends on the noun. So, participles, adjectives, ordinal numbers, consistent with masculine nouns, end in the ith, ith, ith (beautiful garden, singing boy, military soldier); with feminine nouns - at-th, -th (beautiful street, summer time); with nouns of the middle gender - on-th, -th (beautiful sky, winter morning).
Also, the gender of nouns is determined by the end of the predicate expressed by the verb in the past tense in the subjunctive or indicative mood, or in the participle or
short adjective. Masculine - the predicate has zero ending (rain has passed, the plan has been completed); feminine - ending -a (the work is completed, the moon has ascended); middle gender - ending -o (letter received, the sun rose).
There are also
indeclinable nouns. Most of them are middle-class (depots, interviews, and all substantively substantive nonsensitive nouns such as “hello”, “hooray”, “yes”, “tomorrow”, “I don't want”). The following cases are exceptions:
- ha (hectare), coffee, maki, penalty, suluguni, sirocco, ecu, tornado, shimmy, as well as the names of languages (Bengali, Urdu, Suomi, Pashto, Hindi) - masculine;
- Avenue, beach, salami, kohlrabi - feminine.
The gender of non-declining nouns, such as
geographical names, the names of newspapers, magazines, can be determined by the gender of the noun with the meaning of the generic term (full-flowing
(lake) Ontario, Japanese (city) Tokyo, wide (river) Mississippi, published (newspaper) The Times) . The gender of abbreviations must be determined by the gender of the main word (Moscow State University - masculine - Moscow State University; UN - feminine - United Nations Organization; CIS - middle gender - Commonwealth of Independent States). It is impossible to establish the gender of nouns that are not used in the singular, but only in the plural, since they have no gender category (trousers, pitchforks, pasta, manger).